Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Suze Orman Should Keep Her Moment

I was weirdly fascinated by the profile of Suze Orman in the Sunday Times Magazine. I read it with a kind of growing horror and I wasn't sure why -- her advice is basic and she's a good salesperson. Then, I got to this:

"She has been reluctant to work on school curricula on personal finance, because she says students can’t learn empowerment from people who aren’t empowered, and teachers, she says, are too underpaid ever to have any real self-worth. She told me: “When you are somebody scared to death of your own life, how can you teach kids to be powerful? It’s not something in a book — it ain’t going to happen that way.”

So, unless you make a lot of money you have no self-worth? No sense of power and efficacy in the world? Someone should tell Suze Orman that that message is SO 2006.

The article is interesting, but Orman is who she is and can sell the way she does because even though she doesn't seem to be flashy, money seems to mean control and power to her. It's not that those aren't aspects of money - its just that there's so much more to money, and, a s I think we'd agree, life!